Jumpers or shunt connectors for configuring pinned electronic equipment are known in the art. See, for example, U.S. Pat No. 5,337,468. Typically, they comprise small plastic housings containing spring clips on their interior designed to mount over and electrically shod circuit two pins upstanding on a PCB and connected to other components on the PCB. With surface mount technology (SMT), the pins are replaced by flat electrically-conductive pads on the PCB, and thus a jumper for SMT would have to mount across adjacent pads and form an electrically-conductive connection between them.
Tape and reel supply of electrical pads for automatic pick-and-place by a mechanical or pneumatic device onto a PCB or similar device is well known in the art. See, for example, the description in copending U.S. application, Ser. No. 08/084,579, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,451,174. In the conventional system, a plastic carrier tape with sprocket holes along one or both edges is embossed to form a series of pockets into each of which is placed an electrical component. The assembly is then covered with a plastic strip and reeled up on a reel. During assembly of the PCB, the strip is unreeled, the plastic cover removed, and a pick-and-place head is used to contact and pick, for example, a SMT component out of a carrier pocket and place it in a desired position, usually under control of a computer, on one or more tinned PCB pads. The latter are usually provided with solder paste that acts to temporarily hold the SMT part onto the PCB pads during a subsequent solder reflow process which permanently bonds and electrically connects the part to the PCB circuitry via the pads. This system has been successfully used for many years.
It is desirable to place jumpers, and in particular, SMT jumpers, by pick-and-place equipment in the same manner as other SMT components to reduce assembly costs. Moreover, there is a need in the art for miniature jumpers that occupy a minimum of valuable space on a PCB. Still further, there is a need in the art for a miniature jumper that can be user-controlled to interconnect or disconnect adjacent pads on a PCB.